Essay on Nuclear Energy: A Comprehensive Analysis of Viability, Benefits, and Public Perceptions

Energy security is a crucial ingredient for the industrial growth and economic development of any civilization. For instance, the invention of fire as a source of energy in the early Stone Age period revolutionized social welfare and continues to do so to date. However, the changes in the nature of economies and the establishment of high energy-intensive production systems require reliable and energy-dense power systems. It is only such energy-dense sources that can cope with the increasing domestic and commercial demands for energy. Even at individual levels, the energy demand continues to grow with the proliferation of electronic gadgets that rely on the power supply to operate. Therefore, the supply of energy should keep pace with needs to guarantee human and economic development. A mix of various energy sources, including fossil fuels, nuclear, renewables solar, hydro, and wind, are currently used to meet the energy demand. However, there is still a disproportionately heavy reliance on fossil fuels for energy generation that results in high emissions of greenhouse gases and its associated global warming and climate change.

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While renewables continue to grow, wind, solar, and hydro are only slowly being integrated due to various challenges in harnessing them into full-scale commercial use. Based on these realities, the September 2020 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Scientific Forum focused on assessing nuclear power's ability to drive a sustainable future. In a world that embraces sustainability, energy sources must be clean and renewable to prevent extreme trade-offs with social welfare and environmental health. Resolving the sustainability question in power supply will significantly improve commodity production, supplies, and price indices. Cognizant of the growing world population and invention of energy-demanding technologies, it is imperative to harness the production of renewable, clean, and high energy intense energy. Notwithstanding the limitations of nuclear as a source of energy, it is a zero-emission source of clean energy and highly reliable, low-cost, and high energy-dense, which makes it a promising energy source for a fast-evolving world.

What Makes Nuclear Energy a Cutting-Edge Solution?

Nuclear energy offers a reliable energy source with low environmental footprints, thus allowing socio-economic development to occur. Compared to the predominant fossil fuel sources of energy such as coal and petroleum, nuclear has low carbon emissions. This means that it is possible to harness nuclear for meeting global energy demands while at the same time controlling runaway climate change (Ho and Silje 431). Throughout the life cycle of nuclear power plant operation, the greenhouse gas emissions are very minimal, which means that it offers carbon savings in a world where climate change and global warming are fast escalating to global crisis levels. In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change posit that nuclear power, if well managed, has the potential to make significant contributions to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide while still meeting the rising energy demands (Vossen 1439). The weak link in the actualization of large-scale nuclear power generation is highly attributable to public communication. Understandably, public buy-in is vital in establishing transformational changes in the energy sector.

The media has only focused on highlighting the few nuclear accidents such as Fukushima and Chornobyl, which undermines objective discourse on the significant environmental savings that can be attained with nuclear power. Today's science communication specialists and policymakers have worked in earnest to disseminate the correct set of information about nuclear energy. The success of such initiatives will result in a scientifically literate citizenry that appreciates the environmental penalties that nuclear power can offset relative to the fossil fuel-intensive economies in the present (Ho and Silje 433). Ideally, to appreciate nuclear energy's ecological and welfare benefits, it is necessary to assess nuclear power compared to other sources of energy. Creating such a context for analysis demonstrates that the environmental trade-offs of atomic energy are lower than other sources of energy (Ho and Silje 436). Furthermore, nuclear technology and scientific progression make it a reliable energy source in a progressive global community (Vossen 1447).

Compared to traditional sources of energy, nuclear provides a reliable and flexible energy source for reducing total system operating costs. Conventional nuclear reactors were used in baseload mode as a common practice to meet economic efficiency and regulatory requirements. Still, technical research has shown that nuclear power plants can attain very high operational flexibility and vary the power output temporally. This flexibility in atomic power operations reduces the frequency and severity of negative energy prices (Jenkins 877). One of the drivers of energy generation costs is the imbalance between supply and demand, which results in supply energy that cannot be stored yet costs in the generation are already incurred. This excess power generation's net effect is an unnecessary cost burden on the generators, which is passed to the consumers. The flexibility of nuclear energy generation makes it highly responsive to seasonal variability in the demand or system operator dispatch. Countries, including France, Germany, and Belgium, have attained a considerable level of experience with flexible nuclear operations (Jenkins 872). Furthermore, nuclear power has high density, which means that one typically requires more alternative renewables to generate a unit of energy that matches up to the nuclear. Such multiple power generation points imply extra investments and more space for development, which is not tenable in an era with increased competition with other uses for suitable locations for such projects.

Appreciating the reliability and flexibility of nuclear power plants requires it to be looked at within the context of other renewables such as solar, wind, and hydro. Importantly, it will be strenuous for the highly touted renewables to sustainably generate power within acceptable cost margins and expected reliability. For instance, renewables are inherently intermittent, meaning that they rely on backup power or energy storage to supply baseload energy to the grid. The required backup for these renewables ought to be flexible and come from dirty fossil fuels. Assuming that the renewables were to continue relying on backup from fossil fuels for their flexibility, as is the case now, they would not only meet the sustainability requirements. Still, they will also not be economically viable ( Brook et al. 16).

The nuclear power plants currently operating have demonstrated the ability to offset energy demands at reasonable long-term costs and minimize risks in the countries that have implemented atomic projects. As of 2010, more than four hundred nuclear power plants were operating and supplying an estimated total of 370.238 GW, which is about 14% of the world's energy (Owen 1306). These reactors are situated in different parts of the world, with some having operated for more than thirty years. With a projected operational life lifespan of up to fifty years, some of the old nuclear pans nearing decommissioning in the UK, Russia, and other European countries have not had any incidents such as leaks or bursts. This high level of safety is a testament to the improved efficiency of the plant's reactors and surveillance to prevent any hazardous risks often associated with nuclear material. This reality rebuttals the excessive precaution with which some countries and individual scientists have treated the question of establishing nuclear power plants. If anything, there is no perfect system, including in the other power generation. This means that when evidence points to nuclear energy's viability, the focus then shifts towards minimizing its potential risks, thus allowing the enjoyment of reliable energy.

The costs involved in setting up a nuclear power plant are higher than other fossil fuel alternatives such as coal power but once established, the construction costs, which are the largest driver of costs, are sunk (Owen 1307). Therefore, over time, the costs of operating a nuclear power plant become cheaper. At the moment, in most of the OECD countries with existing nuclear plants, nuclear power remains the most affordable form of producing electricity. Nuclear technologists continue to explore the long-term cost minimization of nuclear plans by attempting to extend their lifetime. The achievable cost savings with nuclear power are not theoretical but rather practical, as demonstrated in France's case. France demonstrated the economic viability of nuclear energy by setting up an ambitious national energy program that resulted in more than 75% supply of nuclear-generated electricity at the global lowest price (Brook et al. 10). As a result of this initiative, France set itself as an independent energy country and at lower risks of energy price shocks such as what was occasioned by the 1970s oil crisis. France's case exposes the fallacy often projected by opponents that nuclear power is costly to set up, operate, and decommission. In practice, costs associated with power generation are always passed down to the consumer. If it was confirmed that nuclear power is expensive, it should have been reflected in France's per unit power price.

A critical step towards reaping nuclear energy's positives is to maintain clear and scientifically guided information to the public (Ho and Silje 434). This approach eliminates possible stonewalling about the idea of establishing nuclear plants and enjoying the benefits therein. Admittedly, the process of setting up a nuclear power plant requires broad-spectrum consensus and public acceptance, which can only be achieved through striking a balancing act between information and sensitization. However, how the Chornobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents were covered has significantly influenced public perceptions about nuclear power, giving a misconception that it is a disastrous energy source. Much of the public perceptions about nuclear have been framed by the two major accidents in the nuclear power plants with only little available information to demystify how exactly disaster preparedness would have helped to avert the hazards (Ho and Silje 435).

Arguably, information dissemination has been primarily driven by political inclinations without much focus on detailed scientific analysis of how nuclear power plants operate, their waste, energy potential, and disaster response mechanisms. It is only with such deliberate analysis that the counterfactuals about the efficiency of nuclear power plants manifest. Instead of hypnotizing the public with a bizarre impression about atomic power, it would be beneficial to contextualize it as a source of energy among other alternative sources and treat the unfortunate incidents in isolation as just an accident. However, for environmental and population safety, the lessons drawn from Fukushima and Chornobyl have been considered in all modern-day reactors. Misinformation or information gaps make the public wrongfully frame nuclear energy as dangerous technology and beyond human control (Vossen 1446).